What Eyes Remember and Womb of
God
Senior Creative Writing Project
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For a Degree Bachelor of Arts with
A Major in Creative Writing at The University of North Carolina at Asheville
Fall 2006
By Corrie Renee Brown
Thesis Director Dr. Richard Chess
Thesis Advisor Dr. Lorena Russell
Table of Contents
What Eyes Remember .................................... pg 2
Part One: Little Eyes (1921) .......................... pg 3
Part Two: What Eyes Remember (1974) ................... pg 8
Part Three: What Eyes Saw (1927) ...................... pg 14
Part Four: When Eyes Close (1974) ..................... pg 20
Part Five: Rainbow Eyes (1931) ........................ pg 21
Part Six: New Eyes (1931) ............................. pg 26
Womb of God. ........................................... pg 28
Statement from the Author
What Eyes Remember is a collect of stories, memories, and reflections from different members of my mother and father's families. I want to thank everyone who took the time to speak with me, and patiently answer my questions, especially my mother, Jill Brown, and father, Dallas Brown, These stories are my interpretation of these family memories.
Many thanks to Dr. Lorena Russell for her unending patience, encouragement, and help with this project
For my grandmother- Jane Marie Lackey "You are my sunshine"
What Eyes Remember
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Part One- Little Eyes (1921)
It is my christening, and I am their first child. All
I see is vaulted ceilings and all I hear is the priest's
voice as it booms out over the congregation.
"Let us welcome into God's peace the newest member of
our parish." His thumb presses down on my forehead in the
sign of the cross. Next my father and mother fingers, wet
with the holy water of Christ, mark me as an eternal member
of heaven.
I am the first child of Robert and Margaret Lackey, and
I am a beautiful child with hazel eyes and silky brown hair
already covering my baby head. Everyone is gathered in the
church, St. Ann's Cathedral in Etna, and I am wearing a long
dress of white cotton that my Aunt Vera sewed for me. A lacy
baby bonnet covers my head and is pulled down over my ears.
My mother looks uncomfortably tight in the front row of the
church with her brown dress buttoned up to the very top. She
is only seventeen, still a child herself. Churches always
make her nervous, they always have and they always will. She
has beautiful dark brown hair and a milky white Irish
complexion. My father, in a brown suit to match my mother's
severe dress, tucks his fingers into his pockets and lets
everybody look at his baby girl. He has
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light green eyes that my grandmother says will hold the
devil someday, and a shock of blondish hair that does not
stay down under his hat. Margaret returned out of the
mystery of a two month disappearance with this man named
Robert Lackey. My grandmother doesn't know who he was or
where he came from and doesn't much care to either. However,
because Margaret not only came back home with a new man, but
also pregnant, my grandmother had very little choice. They
agreed to be married in a Catholic church, (which proved
good enough for my grandmother, and unpleasant enough for my
mother) and started living in a little house in West View
until I was born. It was only because of my grandmother that
I was christened at all, because, as I mentioned before,
churches made my mother uncomfortable.
Paired with my first gifted memory of my father leaning
over the baptismal, grinning from ear to ear with yellowed
teeth and kind green eyes, was the memory of the party
afterwards. The story was forever immortalized in stories
for neighbors, mailmen, bus drivers, and beauticians by my
grandmother when she would introduce me in the years to
come.
"This is my granddaughter Jane." I would curtsy. "Her
father was a drunk. He even ruined her christening,"
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"Poor child," They would say and cross themselves
quickly. "It is truly the devil to have an Irish father."
The christening party was at my grandmother's house. My
grandmother's name is Caroline and she mothered seven
children, my mother, Uncles Elmer, Bill, and Eddie, Calvin
and my Aunts Vera and Ruth, as well as two children, George
and Edith, to her previous husband. All of them, except
George and Edith were under the age of sixteen when I was
born. My mother Margaret Sophia is the eldest of the Richter
family. Caroline's house was on Mount Troy on Evergreen Ave,
and was considered a pretty big house by all of her
neighbors. But when it housed over fifteen people, all ruled
over by my grandmother, it was its own universe-sized
problem stuffed into something about the size equivalent of
a bowling ball.
This story would follow.
Mama and Papa have brought me home, and Pap Richter,
has grabbed my mother around the waist swinging her in
circles.
"When are we going to have another one out of you
Margie," he says poking at her slender belly.
Uncle Elmer, the oldest of my uncles, hits my father
hard on the back, congratulating him and handing him a fat
cigar. Grandmother, (or Mum Richter as everyone knew her)
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never approved of smoking and definitely not in her
kitchen. She shoos them to the upstairs, and Uncle Mike, Mum
Richter's brother, follows the rest of the men with a large
glass bottle of amber colored whiskey hidden under his thin
jacket.
My mother and her sister Vera pull large, long rolls of
bread out of the oven and place them on a cooling rack over
the old pot-bellied stove until the smells of bread
overtake the whole house. These were to go with the beef
stew simmering in the big steel pot. My mother seems more
calm now that she is out of the church, and she and my Aunt
Vera talk about plans for new dresses and a dance that's
going on over in Northside next week. Ruth helps Mum
Richter pour small tumblers of whiskey and cups of dark
coffee to the guests that have made themselves cozy in the
living room and along the front porch of the house.
While everyone surrounds themselves with good food
and laughter, the sound of singing, very bad singing, comes
pounding down the stairs accompanied by feet stomping
against the floorboards. While the older women try to drown
out the noise by talking and laughing louder it is my mother
who finally sees the thin stream of yellow liquid coming
out of the attic window. It hits against the closed kitchen
window and leaves streaks down it. By the time she
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tries to distract Mum Richter it is too late, and Mum
Richter sees that the men are peeing out of the window
because they are drunk and don't want to come downstairs.
Later, when my mother tries to remove the bottle from my
father's hand, he pushes her arm away so hard that there is
a bruise on it by morning. I lay the whole time in a crib by
the back bedroom.
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Part two- What eyes remember (1974)
I don't know if it is still possible to see your
childhood when you dream. It is something that perhaps only
the very old see, something we glimpse around a corner, it
flashes quickly into our memory, that short instance before
we die. This happens to me in my sleep. I see you before you
were stuck in this bed. I see glimpses of my childhood, and
the places long forgotten in the realms of waking and
reality. I am so much older now, but I can remember many
things. I remember all of the things that the teenager in us
blocks, that the young adult tries so hard to push to the
very back of the memory and the things that the mature adult
wants to edit out. When I close my eyes I see children
waiting on the front steps of a tall brick house, I see my
broken doll on the sidewalk, and I see the sailboats made
out of leaves that I sailed down the river when I was seven.
My eyes remember the Steel city, as it was seen by those who
came here to make a new life.
You were an Irish queen, and my father was a drunk. In
the darkness, I sometimes wonder if I can remember the top
of that smoky city without also remembering the red-rimmed
green eyes of my father, or the tired brown eyes of mother.
My vision fades into focus. Not unlike the creaking
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start of a movie that isn't too sure it wants to begin.
First the edges fuzz in and the camera draws steadily closer
on a city that is just waking up. It is a city that has one
to many names for its self- The Steel City, the Golden
Triangle, The Three Rivers, The Burgh, The Smokey City- It
was Pittsburgh own shining era, a spreading rash of tall
buildings and narrow twisting alley ways. These are
buildings that have nowhere to grow- except up. They are all
squashed into the triangle made by where the Allegheny and
Monongahela Rivers converge. At the top of the triangle,
pressed into the point, is a huge stone fountain to get the
Ohio River flowing off to a good start. But it all begins in
Pittsburgh.
After my mind's eye remembers the over-crowded, out-
growing buildings, it remembers the rivers. They are
straight, wide and blue. They close in around the city like
a vice. The 40th Street and Liberty bridges leap across from
bank to bank, connecting one shore to another. Moving out
from the city, I now remember cobblestone roads, the kinds
made for riding bikes on, turning into dirt lanes and
leading out towards the country. They lead towards Gibsonia
and Butler. These foreign places where, when I was a child,
crowded houses on a hillside were replaced by fields, and
trolleys replaced by a lone figure walking down the path.
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My eyes remember much, but not much of what I remember
exists anymore. There are parts of Pittsburgh that I can no
longer travel to and parts that I haven't seen in many
years. Pittsburgh is a town built in upon its self, built
upon years and years of toil and industry. It was built on
the backs of foreign workers. I watched as each wave of
immigrant and migrant worker as they flowed into Pittsburgh.
As if with each new lap of water against the shore more
people climbed on land with a coal pick in hand or a laundry
basket under their arm.
They families that moved into the Three Rivers, those
that gave it the breath it needed, moved under the skin of
the city. German families, with stern fathers and big boned
grandmothers with ringing laughter, turned the Northside
into Dutchtown. Some Germans and even more Jews lived up in
Squirrel Hill. I can still remember the blue glass I saw
that decorated the outside of their Synagogue when Mother
and I once took a trolley ride to the Squirrel Hill Park
after the first of mother's many doctor appointments. The
sun shone through it in patches on the sidewalk, and I
looked for it each time we returned to the park. And even
still there was the Hill, where the Blacks lived, and had
wonderful dances in the community center built by the
church. Sometimes, we were able to catch snatches of the
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music when we passed on our bicycles.
My people are Irish and I can still see you, my
mother, tall and proud with a straight back and curls of
hair around the nap of your neck. You hum Rosin Dubh as you
hang out the wash in our small yard.
The Irish built the city, "from ground up" or at least
that's what Daddy would tell me when he still cradled me on
his knee.
"Just look at the thanks we got," he would say. I'm
sure my baby eyes held no understanding but still gazed at
his mouth and listened to his strong voice. The Irish had
no one place to call theirs in Pittsburgh. We carved out
niches wherever we went. We settled in where we could. When
I went to the butcher as a child, I would hear the throaty
voice of our German neighbor. At church, Poles sung the
Halleluiahs next to us in the back pews. In later years
miners and railway workers from Eastern Europe would move
into the workers houses that were on the other side of Mount
Troy.
For a moment you look at me with your old eyes, and I
think you might scold me for remembering how it used to be.
"That was a long time ago," you would tell me now. I move
the pillows back behind your head, and adjust the tubes in
your mouth and nose. The doctor has said you will die
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within the week; the emphysema has set on to quickly. I
feel that I need to remember faster for I am almost to my
childhood, and almost to you.
The next thing that comes before my eyes are small
houses carved out of the sides of hills. They are stacked
on top of one another and laid over top, over and over
again, all the way up the side of the hill. Northside- It
wasn't just the Northside of the city. It wasn't just
DutchTown with small winding streets, bakers, repair shops,
grocery shops, and Ramsey's Candy shop where my daughter
would one day buy her penny candy. It was where most of the
Irish, and nearly all of the German families in Pittsburgh
ended up, and it was my home.
If you want to remember how it was, mother, try to
imagine Pittsburgh at the center of a blanket, and the rest
of the blanket running out in rolling bits away from the
center, where the city sits comfortably nestled. Across the
river from the north side of town, on the side of that first
roll, sits the North Side. Off to the side of that little
roll, high up, over-looking the river and sitting opposite
of Mt. Washington is Mt. Troy.
It is here that my vision sharpens. It is here that I
remember the small house with odd turning stairways, and
small cold rooms. My grandmother's house is on the top of
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Mt. Troy. It was at that house that I could lie on an attic
bedroom floor with my brother Buddy, and smell the cooking
of Mum Richter's Sunday pot roast and potatoes, possibly
the only meat we would taste that week. It was this house
that we fled to after the disaster that was my father.
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Part 3- What eyes saw (1927)
My eyes do not adjust well to the darkness and I sit
up in bed quickly. I look around and focus on corners and
small details in the room, my dress is put out on the
chair, my father's rosary hanging on a pin by the door,
until I am sure that the room is mine. I feel the cotton
sheets, and hear the snores of my brother next to me in the
bed. His light brown hair falls against his eyes as he
breathes in and out softly. He is only a year younger than
me. His five-year old brain swims with the imagination and
dreams that accompany a child. I however, cannot fall back
asleep.
The room is half lit by a street light on the corner,
and a soft snow falls, throwing strange moving shadows onto
the wall. The slanted angle of the light falls on the empty
spot next to me. It is where my mother should be. I suddenly
remember, and know why I have woken up in the middle of the
night. I remember what I saw earlier in the night through
the crack in the downstairs hallway door. I saw what was
nothing more than a rough lined hand against the small of my
mother's back, curling the fabric into a tight knot around
its knuckles. There were low voices and murmured promises
of I'll see you tonight. When I creep
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back into the room after seeing this I notice the blue
dress hanging in the closet.
I push my hair, only a little darker than my
brother's, away from my face as I slide back underneath the
cool sheets in the dark and listen for the sound of
footsteps or a taxi door. Mother barely makes a sound when
she comes into the room; she holds her heeled shoes in one
hand so that she won't alert the rest of the house, and so
that she won't wake me and buddy. She has a black shawl
wrapped tightly around her small rounded shoulders. I see
the glint of blue from her dress where the moonlight catches
it, the same frayed beaded hem I had run my fingers over
earlier while the dress was still hanging in the coffin-like
closet. I shut my eyes quickly as mother comes over to the
bed and leans lightly over me. She brushes a kiss onto my
forehead with her fingertips. I watch her pull on her
dressing gown over her dress and push the shoes underneath
the bed all three of us share. She is asleep in seconds,
and I follow into my own deep sleep only a few minutes
later.
The next morning at the breakfast table, I watch
mother move gently in and out of the room. She walks
carefully, treading slightly on each floorboard, taking
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care not to bump her slender hip into the corner of the
rough wooden table. She has traded the blue dress for stiff
brown pants and a button down shirt with a lacy collar, but
she still wraps the dressing gown around her because of the
chill in the house. Mum Richter is in the kitchen. She
frowns pointedly in my mother's direction.
"Margie," she barks, "The children need taken to
school." Mum Richter whisks eggs together in a bowl with the
flat end of a fork- short and stunted whirring motion. The
points of the fork hit against the bottom of the metal bowl
with a sharp staccato. I follow Mum Richter's eyes as she
counts over the eggs left, calculating how many more she
will have for the week. I hurry into the next room to finish
preparing for school as mother and Mum Richter stare
silently at each other. Mum Richter moves back towards the
counter with a sigh. Her overskirt tucked up to keep it away
from the fire, and stray hairs are already coming loose
from her bun as she moves around the kitchen. Finally,
mother begins slowly pulling on worn white snow boots
underneath her robe.
I run to the bureau in the hallway, the one that Uncle
Mike once said he would take up to our room, (though he
never did). When Uncle Mike tried to lift it up the narrow
stairs for the last time I smelled something sour on him,
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and he dropped the bureau on one of his toes. Mother,
without sympathy, told him to sleep it off on the couch.
I pull out the bottom drawer of the bureau, the only
one left that has a handle, and begin pulling out old
newspapers and tablecloths until I find a long pair of Pap
Richter socks. I double them up over my own and squeeze my
feet into my torn brown shoes. From beneath those piles of
fabric I sneak a look, ever so quickly, at a black and white
photo of a tall man with a shock of hair that won't stay
under his cap. My father smiles in this photo. I quickly
cover it back up with the socks, allowing myself only a
second with the man in the photo. When I stand up, the
mirror attached to the bureau catches a reflection of my
six-year-old self. My short brown is cut close in around my
face, right under my chin, and my nose is a pushed up
button in the center of my unimpressive eyes and mouth. I
pull my hair back from my eyes and imagine what I would
look like with the red lipstick and bright rouge that mother
wears when she goes out dancing. Another pot clanks into
the sink and I can hear Aunt EdithAs children running down
the stairs to get at breakfast. I glance towards the kitchen
and quickly bend to finish lacing my shoes. Mother will have
to help me tie them. Soon the rest of the house will be up
and at Mum Richter for breakfast. Mother, Buddy,
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and I will be half way to Etna by then.
"Are you taking' them by the bus again," Mum Richter
calls to Mother while she helps me pull on my coat. From
around the corner, Buddy enters the kitchen in the middle of
Mother's last furtive look at the broad woman standing in
the middle of the kitchen.
"No Ma, IAm going to walk them down. They'll be fine
just give me a break already," Mother takes a final pull of
a cigarette and ushers us children out of the door. After
we are gone I know that Mum Richter empties the ashtray and
hides the rest of the cigarettes in a kitchen drawer.
The air is still chill and hasn't quite yet shed its
lingering dampness. The sun struggles to reveal itself from
behind a thick black screen of Pittsburgh's filth and smog.
From on top of Mount Troy, the entire city lays cut in
patchwork- a patchwork that doesn't quite fit together, cut
through by small streams and twisting roads that run
through the city and out into the country, cobblestone roads
that made your bike fall sideways when you ride them, and
dirt roads beaten down by feet and wheels. From the top of
Mt. Troy, (although it is not so much a mount as a large and
steep hill) I see the three rushing blue rivers, the veins
of the city, thick and ropey, cut through the gray roads
and houses. Far at the end of the city lays the point
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where two of the rivers collide into the Ohio, the
Allegheny and the Monongahela. I like the way the rivers
role off the tongue, "Da Al-a-geny," and "Da Mon" Uncle Mike
says. On the other side of the hill is Etna. We walk from
Mount Troy. I grasp mother in her right hand, and hold
Buddy's hand in my other. I have to make sure he doesn't get
lost with the other travelers, the groups of school children
and factory workers. At the end of the row, the road drops
sharply and curves down the hill right by a bush of lilacs.
I am certain that the bush continues right down the cliff,
although I always get scared to look over the edge. I look
one more time out at the city before turning the corner
after mother. The road that goes over the cliff is called
Pig's Alley and I can already see the sows and hogs being
corralled to run down the steep drop. At the bottom of the
hill, and the end of the run, is the slaughter house. While
it is still too early to see it I know that a greasy black
fog will soon be rising out of the slaughterhouse's big
hollow chimneys and pig's screams will cover the hillside.
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Part 4: When Eyes Close (1974)
In case you were wondering when I close my eyes, I am
trying to fix a picture of you in my mind. Not a picture of
the woman I see in front of me now. Not the woman that lies
in this bed, pushed down into covers that come up around
your body, that threaten to engulf you. I can trace the
lines of your face through the sunken valley of your cheeks.
Your eyes follow mine as I try to focus on anything other
than you, and I have to lean in closer to hear what you are
saying.
"Ice," the only word that you say, and I hold out the
slippery piece to you. I place in on your tongue like a
priest giving communion. Your eyes close in satisfaction,
but I cannot stand the picture of you like this before my
eyes for the rest of eternity.
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Part 5: Rainbow Eyes (1931)
I sit at the corner of the large wooden table in Mum
Richter's house. Mother is at work at the hair salon in
Etna. It opened three weeks ago. I know it has opened
because that is when the fights about it between mother and
Mum Richter lessened. Mum Richter had not wanted Mother to
open the shop by herself. I remember one of these fights in
the final days before the shop opened.
"It will fail Margaret Sophia," she slammed the
knifepoint down into the cutting board on the table. "I can
promise you that it will." Mother was perched on the same
kitchen stool her long arms crossed over each other and
resting on her knee. A thin cigarette cradled between her
index and middle finger. Mother blew a puff of smoke towards
Mum Richter.
"Well what do you want me to do mum?" The question
hung in the air. "The children are getting bigger, they
need new clothes and school books, and I'm not getting any
richer sitting around this house cleaning up after chickens
and doing laundry." She took another puff and dared her
mother to answer her.
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"Working in the house is the woman's place," but Mum
Richter said this under her breath and looked at her
daughter almost fearfully. "Maybe you should go back to
Robert's." At this suggestion, I remember that mother left
without saying one more word to the sullen woman who still
stood at the kitchen cutting board, slicing tomatoes for
sandwiches.
Mother opened her shop on Wylie Road. It was a small
rectangular room that had only enough space for two chairs
and a small sink. I am ten now and Buddy nine and we are
almost through the Etna Grade school. Buddy says that it's
my fault Mother had to open the shop because I am
outgrowing all of my clothes too quickly, even with Aunt
Edith altering my cousin's old clothes for me. Mother opened
the shop because she had little other choice.
I sit at the table in the house looking at the small
pocket watch nailed to the wall that serves as a clock. I am
eating a cold tomato and pepper sandwich and tick off the
minutes until I can leave to meet up with mother. Since I am
now ten I am allowed to take the bus by myself into Etna. I
got a note to meet mother at her shop when it closes at six.
When I leave the house I can hear Pap Richter and my
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older uncles in the attic with the still. Several years ago
they had decided to build a still to make moonshine in the
attic. I make out Uncle Calvin and Uncle Bill's voices out
from among grandfather's and the other men from the
neighborhood.
Murph runs into the kitchen and starts digging around
in the cupboards for a large bowl and a mixing spoon. Murph
isn't related to any one in the family. He is around
Mother's age, 25 or so and just always seems to be around
the family.
"Hi Janie," Murph smiled at me, "Don't tell your Mama
I'm borrowing this okay." I glare at him, (a technique I
mastered over last summer), and fling my now shoulder length
hair over my shoulder.
"I'm on my way to get her right now," I turn on my
heels and head out the wooden screen door that leads onto
the back porch. The door bangs shut behind me. I duck into
the backyard, which isn't much of a back yard, only a few
shrubs and a square patch of green grass. There is a large
lilac bush near the back fence and a space where I can fit
between to climb out onto the back road. I continue to walk
down Evergreen Ave. towards the bus stop at the top of
Pig's Alley. The screaming of the pigs was something that I
thought I would never get used to when I was little. Once I
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walked by the slaughterhouse with father, with him wanting
to go inside. I didn't want him to take me in and instead
stood outside of the gate with my hands over my ears while
he went and looked around the slaughterhouse. Since moving
in with Mum Richter I am a little bit more used to the
screaming clatter of the pigs.
As I make my way down the street towards the bus
station, I amuse myself with looking into the windows of
the different houses I pass. I cut through a cross street
and pass the miners housing units. Outside on their porch,
six of the miners sit drinking the sludgy remains of beer
in squat brown bottles. Only the circles, where their
goggles rest around their piercing eyes, is white. The rest
of the skin is blackened and ash flakes away in the dusky
light. They nod lightly to me as I cut in front of their
complex. Not many of them can speak English, knowing only
how to write a name and an address on the back of the
envelopes provided by the mining company to send home their
paychecks in. The envelopes have of a statue of Liberty in
the backdrop.
At the end of the row, is a large house. I scramble
under a large bush in its front yard so that I can get a
better look into the illuminated room. For the past two
nights, on my way to pick up mother, I have looked in at
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this family. I look at the father, spread out on the floor
of the living room, playing with his small son. The boy is
probably only five or so. I don't allow myself very long to
look in on them.
"He'll probably never realize how lucky he is to have a
father,'7 I mutter to myself as I get up off of the ground,
dust off my knee length plaid skit and continue on towards
the bus.
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Part Six- New Eyes (1931)
I meet mother outside of her shop about five minutes
before closing time and I wait inside the shop for her.
Sitting in her only chair, the one with a mechanical lever
to lower the back down so she can wash the woman's hair, I
watch her sweep the last of the hair snippings into the
trash.
"Come over here darling, and help me fold this thing
up," she is referring to a black plastic cape she puts over
the customers shoulders to keep hair off of them.
"How was school today?" She keeps her eyes on the
floor as I tell her it was fine. Then I tell her about
Murph and the men upstairs.
"They'll always be like that sweetie." She pats my
arm. "That's something that doesn't change."
"They get so loud though," I counter back. "I always
get there ridiculous songs stuck in my head, too." I pause
briefly. "Except for the one song, I like the one that Pap
sometimes sings when he's really drunk." She looks at me out
of the side of her eye.
"Which one is that?" she asks, although I'm pretty
sure that she knows which one I'm talking about. I look
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down at my feet and begin singing softly, "You are my
sunshine, my only sunshine..."
"Yeah, I remember that song too," She disappears into
the back room to collect her coat. I shouldn't have sung the
song around her. Daddy used to sing that one to Mother
before he left and he used to sing it to me while I was in
my crib. Mother came back out, and walked me back through
the front so that she could lock up. She looks tired- older
somehow.
"I'm going to take you to Islay's little woman," she
draped her arm around me in an easy way as we made our way
towards town. "And we are going to get ourselves some
strawberry ice, and I'm going to teach you a new song to
learn, okay." We continue on down the street this way, hand
in hand, towards the city and towards the blackening sky.
Womb of God
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Flicks
It was a door that wouldn't be noticed at first. Small,
painted black, it was one of those doors you simply pass
over. You're eyes never register that it's there. It was
down the back street so that you almost had to know about it
to find it.
It was a small door to a club that was trying to
grow.
Its edges pushed against the bricks of the shrinking
buildings next to it. On the right, the corner scraped
against a small bookstore whose roof leaked in four
different places. Dim window lamps advertised rare and used
books, but the lights illuminated little else. The fledgling
club nudged and poked the bar on the left so hard it gave
the old building a crack along the front corner. All around
the door, the deteriorated buildings sunk into the
background, while the club, Flick's, slowing was growing.
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\ Rebecca
She moved along the street almost cat like. She
wore hardly any color at all, and blended in seamlessly to
the black gray buildings beside her. She carried no bag with
her, and the hood on her black jacket was up so that it
obscured her eyes. When she reached her destination, she
could already feel the pulse of the club drawing her in. Her
features settled into a decidedly feminine form as she
lowered her hood, and, nodding to the thin, terse woman at
the door, entered the club.
Brown 31
Edward
Edward waited just one block down, walking back and
forth, pacing up and down the sidewalk. He had on a long
black coat of some kind of shiny material and the coat
glistened in the late evening sprinkle of snow that was
falling softly from the sky. He held a note in his hand, and
every couple of steps he would glance down at it and read
the couple lines on it over and over again, Come to Flick's
Friday night- Isabelle. Edward pulled a cigarette out of his
pocket while he decided where to go from there.
It had all begun with that story.
He didn't know why he had begun to write it, he didn't
know how. He was a poet any way. That's why he had come to
the University of Pittsburgh to begin with. So why was he
writing a story, and why was he writing it about Isabelle?
It had all started with that first class.
He had first seen her during a class in the Cathedral
of Learning, an overly important sounding gothic looking
building that housed the literature department. She was
sitting at a desk next to an arched window that cast a
strange halo of light around her. Her hair was shorn in a
chucky easy-to-manage style, and she had her nose pierced.
She worked as a bar tender at a club to make her rent; the
same club that was pulsating so hard with its own life that
Brown 32
Edward could feel it a block away.
Isabel spoke to Edward first. He didn't have the nerve
to do it. She had a quiet and encouraging voice that sounded
different from other girl's. It sounded like she had a
severe cold as a child, and could no longer raise her voice
above its mellow and yet raspy tone. From the first moment
he had slid his hand into the easy formation of Isabel's,
from the moment he had touched her skin in that handshake,
Edward had fallen in love and into an obsession.
Brown 33
Rebecca Rebecca was already positioned on the edge of one of
the deep burgundy wrap around booths. Tonight, she was
twenty-three, stunning black hair reaching for the middle
of her back. Her hair glittered straight down the back of
her dress. Her blue eyes a bright contrast to the darkness
of the rest of her features. Those silky eyes moved along
with the patrons of the club, watching them as they began
to move in and out of tight knit groups. The room was
beginning to breathe.
The entire club was one large circular room, enlarged
only by the small balcony that you could reach through the
staircase near the back wall. A heavy black velvet curtain,
lit to appear like it was littered stars, covered the
backdrop of the stage.
Along the edge of the room more and more people began
to descend out of hidden hallways. Out of muscle strains of
walls and floor they pressed in on them selves trying to
get to the dance floor. Rebecca observed all of these
things through the curve of her wine glass, holding it up
to her face. She loved how the slant in the glass made
everyone look as though they were willow trees bending
through a gale. This room, bathed in soft red light and lit
in black shadows, looked like a battlefield to her, a
Brown 34
violent end to her day.
Often times, people didn't see her there in the
corner. She was always silent, sitting in a booth, and
hardly ever dancing or talking with anyone. As more people
pressed into the room, the more she faded into the
background. The more she didn't exist.
Rebecca belonged to a group of people, the ones who
changed, and who were always changing others. They had
grown up in the city, never happy with the sharp angled
turns of downtown streets, and the narrow rectangular bars
that their relatives had drunk their lives away in. These
builders, Rebecca and those like her, where the builders of
the circular rooms, and the results were clubs like Flick's.
Brown 35
Edward
This room hummed, and moved within its own vibrations.
Maybe it was the electric whirring of curved light bulbs in
their trendy recycled lampshades that hung half way down
the wall, or perhaps it was the tinkle of the lip of a wine
bottle against the rim of a long stemmed crystal glass.
These glasses hung over the top of the bar, suspended on a
rack whose origin disappeared into the darkness of the
ceiling. The blood red color of the walls seemed to melt
into each other, and into the dark wood of the dance floor.
Edward slowly made his way down one of the red-carpeted
hallways to the center room, and slipped into one of the
side table as far away from the bar as possible. Sliding
off his coat he revealed the black t-shirt, black jeans and
Doc Martin boots. With his short hair and slim figure, he
cast a strange shadow on the wall that didn't appear so
much as a man or woman, but as an entity blending into the
rhythm of the music and lights.
He pulled the paper out again.
It was after he had met Isabel that she began to write
the story. Yes, it was a love story. And the part that
surprised Edward was that the lines showed nothing of his
over extended metaphors of death and love that permeated
his poetry. While he had no hope of reaching his obsession
Brown 36
within the realm of his every day life, his story character
moved effortlessly in and out of Isabelle's life. First by
making her laugh, smile, and notice him. He made her happy
in this world, and took her dancing. They fell asleep in
each other's arms in this story.
It had seemed harmless then, but even as he sat
there he knew that she would have never recognized that in
him. It had seemed like a harmless way to release his
feelings. He looked at her strong arms, her soft face, and
the easy way that she laughed, and he decided he had no
idea why he came there that night.
After he had received the note to meet her at the club
he hadn't been able to get her out of his head more than
usual. Every part of her life fascinated him. Her clothes
were simple, elegant, dark and fun. Her hair was so much
like his best childhood friend's. It was so carefree and
non-chalant, her writing was wonderful, and her stories
about people even more so.
Brown 37
Isabel
The band was really starting to pick up. Isabel had
seen Slapdash play at Flick's before, and had always liked
them. Not that she usually had much time to watch their
show. Isabel had been a bartender there for two years, lift
wine glass from the rack and hold at a tilt, she had seen
many bands, spin vodka bottle in one hand and pour a shot
measured by the eye, and had seen this scene played out
before her eyes many times, one more parting shot.
She worked here at nights, and was back at school by
the morning. She was only a month away from completing her
degree, and the thought of actually having to survive in
the world was finally settling in. She was beginning to
feel the pressures of not having a "real" job as her parents
would call it, or a boyfriend for that matter. Her past
relationships had no really ever worked out. Isabel had
always been out on her own; always more content to work, go
to school, and go out dancing by herself.
"I don't really feel like I need anyone," she had told
her mom once over coffee. She had come by to try and talk
Isabel into a blind date with the son of a co-worker. She
had shrugged the suggestion off without a second thought.
"Thanks but no thanks," she said, and she started her last
semester of classes single, as before.
Brown 38
This is where she had met Edward. He was one of the
more quiet students.
"That's probably why I'm attracted to him," She told
her roommate before leaving for work that night. "He doesn't
talk to anyone.'' She didn't even know if it was an
attraction. Isabel was never sure about these things.
"But you invited him out right,'7 her roommate had
asked her excitedly.
"Yeah," Isabel laughed at her, "You don't have to
sound that excited that I'm trying to meet people." She
left for work that night with excitement knotting up in her
stomach, and now, from the corner of her eye, she watched
Edward sit in the back booth. Isabel caught glimpses of
him sitting in the far edge of the room, nervously swirling
a martini and trying not to glance in the direction of the
bar.
Brown 39
Edward
He didn't notice many things that night. He didn't
really care about the band, or what he was drinking. What he
did notice was the fact that he couldn't stop looking at
Isabel or thinking what it would be like to kiss her. Isabel
looked like calmer version of the storm of beauty in the
room. She was not quite as a wild, and not quite in sync
with the rhythm of the place. Her hair was cut short like
most of the servers in the room; however it still had its
natural mild brown color. Its life was not yet severed by
the harsh blond and red highlights that seemed to grow on
everyone else's head. She was wearing a small black silk
shirt and black pants. These separated at her middle to show
off the only piece of jewelry she had on, a small silver
belly button ring. She moved about in black strappy heels as
comfortably as if she were in running shoes, pushing curvy
glasses of pink champagne, and chardonnay to the servers as
they rushed past her. Edward watched as his own server came
up to her with the tray and Isabel set another Martini on
it to send over to him. One quick smile and a wink.
Brown 40
Rebecca
As the night went on, Rebecca watched people pulse in
and out as they walked. She wondered to herself where people
learned how to do this. Where had they learned to move
within the rhythm of a room, the rhythm of a walk? She
watched the wide-eyed practice of the people as they moved
about, scared to blink unless they missed something. A few
people danced along to the guitar-driven jazz coming from
the stage. She had found a microcosmic universe spinning
wildly on its axis. From her vantage point across the room
she watched a young man in the booth scribbling quickly in a
small pocket notebook. His drink seemingly forgotten, he
only glanced up every so once in a while. He made eye
contact with Rebecca only once.
She had watched this boy and his furtive looks across
the room at the pretty bar tender. He had a way about him
that said he wanted to hold her with his eyes for the rest
of the night.
"He would be perfectly content to look at her for
eternity without doing a single thing," she said to herself.
"Well, that's something that's going to have to change."
She waited for Edward to tear his gaze away from
Isabel, and then she met his eyes with hers.
Brown 41
"Wait for it." Rebecca commanded with her lips,
mouthing it to the boy. With these words, she watched as
his shadow merged into the shadows of the wall.
Brown 42
Edward
"Shit," Edward cursed quietly under his breath. "Why is
this happening now?" He brought his gaze down from the
intensely attractive woman who had been looking at him,
thinking that she was the reason for the erection he was
experiencing.
"Come on. Think of something else." He commanded
himself, but all he could see was Isabel's face.
However, what followed was not the feeling he was
expecting. In stead of his penis swelling larger it began
to get smaller. He realized that it was pulling inside of
him. Next, a tingle started between his shoulders and
traveled down towards his spine. His black hair, which had
been growing a little more than usual in the days before he
made the trip to the club, became longer. It grew and
twisted down his back. The sensation continued into his
hands tingling to the very tips. They became long and
slender. The tingling continued down the rest of his body,
to in between his legs. On the red wall, his shadow changed
shape so many times that he could no longer recognize it
and it became part of the red wall. He looked down that his
chest that had gained a slight shape to it. His hair
lengthened; his shoulders became straighter. His frame
turned slighter. Edward's shadow became curvy and his skin
Brown 43
pale. He looked over himself wildly, panic slowly welling
up from deep down inside. His mouth worked madly to scream,
yell anything to make this stop, but he was unable to make
any words come out. When he looked back up at where the
woman with the dark hair had been sitting, a slender boy
with black hair and a black coat had taken her place. His
eyes, however, were just as blue as before.
Shoving his notebook into the pocket of his coat,
Edward walked quickly, but not quickly enough to gain much
attention, to the bathrooms at the back of the club. As he
was about to duck into the men's room, a white-faced boy
with short black hair and ice blue eyes grabbed him by the
wrist and pulled him away from the door.
"Hey don't you know you're going into the men's room?"
Edward looked at him and it seemed that he had seen him
somewhere before.
"I'm sorry," He stammered, not recognizing his own
voice.
"What's your name anyway," the white faced boy asked
with a smile.
"Emaline," she said softly.
Brown 44
Julian
Julian had played at Flick's so many times that it was
beginning to feel like a second home. Three hours earlier,
he sighed heavily as he once more sat down at the Steinway
piano that they had brought especially for him. It was down
in Slapdash's contract that Julian would always have a
Steinway to play, or else the band was free to break their
contract and leave the club. In the beginning, it had been
fun to do just that, claiming that the sleek black piano was
a fake Steinway. They always had plenty of other clubs they
could play at, and he, of course, was able to tell a fake.
He was one of the best jazz musicians in the last five
years. They would certainly understand if he couldn't play
on anything less than the best. He had built a reputation
for himself out of this, and without a doubt, at every show,
a brand new, borrowed-from-a-music-store, Steinway piano was
there for his enjoyment.
This has amused him for a while. His band, Slapdash,
was a jazz/rock quintet that had been gaining popularity
through the jazz club scene in Pittsburgh. Flick's was no
different. As he watched the club's technicians set up the
microphones and cables, he ran his long skinny white fingers
down the length of the keys on the piano. He looked around
the familiar club. Above the bar on the wide wall
Brown 45
above the austere bottles of liquor, the club showed scenes
of old black and white movies. These were silent of course,
and no one paid them any attention, it only added to the
ambiance of this place. He watched a small attractive
waitress setting up squat candles in little black holders
on all the tables. They would be opening the club up in
about an hour and they had already set the candles burning.
Julian had watched the red-eyed patrons of this nightclub
before. None of them paid the candles any mind. The candles
served no purpose other than to bow a head to the old
tradition of a fancy night out. They were on the table
because tradition demanded that they be there.
He left the setting up of the rest of the stage to the
techs, and joined his band mates at the bar. The bartender
for that night, a short girl that Julian had never noticed
before, was quietly pouring drinks for them. She seemed to
be saving all of her strength for her shift that night, not
flirting with the band members as most female bartenders
did. He took the offered pale ale brew, and tried to set in
his mind how the club looked without any of its swaying
inhabitants.
The first half of the show had gone off well. The band
took a break to smoke a bowl in the back room. The
Brown 46
inhabitants of the club were also busy refilling drinks, and
chatting each other up in the warm air of the club. Julian
was probably the only one drinking a beer. He wasn't sure
when drinking beer had gone out of style, yet everywhere he
looked he saw the red and white glint of wine glasses in the
crowd. During the last song, a tune called "Red," there had
been a group of people dancing to the thumping of the
stand-up bass and guitar. How appropriate he thought as he
surveyed the sanguine room. The ceiling of the bar was lost
somewhere in the shadows of the converted warehouse, and it
made Julian feel as though he was at the bottom of a fish
tank.
He recalled how, earlier that evening he had laid on
the floor of a different room, and looked up at a different
ceiling. Back at his apartment, before the show, he was
spread on out on the floor, his hands and feet reaching
towards the four corners of the room. It was four hours
before he was supposed to be at the show set-up. Next to
him, in a solid glass ashtray, a rolled joint was still
smoldering. The scent of sweat and pot clung to Julian's
hands. Around the apartment, stacks of manuscript paper
littered the floor, some of it crumpled up. The piano lid
was open, but Julian hadn't played it in a while. Earlier
in the afternoon, Paul had left him for probably, or at
Brown 47
least for what he imagined, was the last time. They had
been living together for a year and a half, but Julian had
never really gotten comfortable. Never really felt a groove
that he imagined he should. He was sinking deeper and
deeper into a depression that he could feel settling over
him. The fight had started with Julian wanted Paul to go to
the show that night with him.
"I really don't think I should go by myself," Julian
had told him. It was the truth at the time. He felt that
Paul was probably the only person that understood him and
the desire that he felt to create, to create music, to
create vibe.
"I really think that maybe you should," was the only
thing that he could come back with. Paul already stood with
a suitcase in his hand. He paused at the door to Julian's
studio/living room, looking at him still sitting on the
couch, half dressed before the show. He had made no
attempts to get up and stop Paul from walking out the door.
Paul tried one last time.
"I'll stay if you don't go to the show tonight. I'll
stay if all of this stops like you said it was going to," he
paused one more time trying to find something to say that
would make Julian understand. "Hell, you don't even like
this life anymore."
Brown 48
Julian looked up at him for the first time. "But it's
the only thing that I know how to do." He looked down again
to the joint he was rolling. "I'll call you tomorrow."
Pulling himself out of his memories at the club, Julian
realized the bass player was almost finished with his solo;
he took another sip of beer and got ready to play.
Brown 49
Rebecca
Rebecca left a terrified Emaline in the girl's
bathroom. She had seen all of this happen before. She had
seen hundreds of terrified girls and confused looking guys.
"They all head for the bathroom for some reason." She
laughed out loud. She circled the room again in her new form
as a man. This was the room where people came into the world
dressed in their best, and dancing the night away. This is
where the ideas were born. This is where love grew.
"It just never goes out looking the way it came in,"
she whispered.
She could see the strains of muscles in the walls, the
warm air on her face. She was sure she was in the very womb
of God, waiting to be born into the rhythm that had
everyone else ensnared. Where had these people learned to
look into each other's eyes and lie? When had it become
such an easy response, if they had not been born with it?
There was one person that had held her attention for
most of the night. She watched the small balding man
playing the piano on the stage as if he were the most
interesting thing there. His hands were gorgeous. She
noticed that right from the beginning. He leaned over the
piano with such attention, eyes closed and feeling with his
fingers. "Isn't that just like musicians,' she thought to
Brown 50
herself. She was hoping that he maybe was the anti-
stereotype, but he was just another musician obsessed with
his world. She wondered if he even noticed his audience. The
man's fingers scattered this way and that, as he moved them
up and down the keys. He had close cut brown hair that clung
stubbornly to his head, but even from where she was seated,
Rebecca could see that he was beginning to loose it. During
the breaks in the songs, he drank slowly out of a tall pint
glass balanced on the edge of the piano, and he kept wiping
himself off with a black silk handkerchief pulled from the
pocket of his tailored pants. She could see him on the edge
of the rhythm of the womb. It was pulling him in slowly;
tugging at his shirtsleeves.
Brown 51
Isabel
During the commotion of the night, Isabel had lost
track of Edward. The patrons of the club were slowly
starting to leave the club, sometimes only in two or
threes, sometimes in large groups that filed out, back into
the cold night. She thought she caught a glimpse of a man
that looked like Edward, but something wasn't quite right
about it.
"All these people look the same after a while."
At the break in the music, Isabel watched as the piano
player sauntered stiffly over to the bar and crawled up
onto one of the black leather bar stools with silver rings
encircling the legs. Setting down the cocktail napkin,
Isabel kept her eyes on the black-haired boy as she asked
the young piano player, "What'11 have?"
"Same as I had before Isabel, Boddingtons's." She
placed the thick pint glass under the tap and set it
running. It was then she noticed a scared looking woman
come out of the bathroom and sit down at the booth Edward
had been sitting at a few moments before.
"Will you excuse me one moment Julian," she didn't
wait for an answer as she quickly untied the short
bartending apron she wore and ran her fingers quickly
through her hair. "I'll be right back."
Brown 52
"I'll keep an eye on him Isabel," a low thick voice
said from behind Julian. The boy Isabel had mistaken for
Edward had come up behind him unknowingly. He made eye
contact with Isabel. "You go on. We'll be fine." Isabel
didn't really stop to question why the man knew her name
when she had never told it to her before.
She walked quickly over to Edward's table, and sat
down. She didn't really know what to say.
"What is your name?" Isabel asked by a way of some
kind of introduction, something to fill in the horrible
silence between them.
The girl's fiery eyes looked up, and she sighed. "Why
does everyone keep asking me that?"
Without saying anything else, she grabbed Isabel's
hand and pulled her towards the bathroom with her.
"Look at that." She pointed towards the small bathroom
mirror that they were both peering into. "Tell me what you
see." Her voice strained. "Tell me what you see Isabel."
"Whoa, So now you know my name too?"
"Just look at me and tell me what you see." She was
close to her, not more than a few inches away from her
face.
"Edward?"
Brown 53
Julian
At the break in the music, Julian went over the bar,
and was given a drink by the same attractive bartender with
the short brown hair. He had played badly tonight, and he
knew it, even if no one else knew he had. All around him, at
the bar and on the dance floor, people were talking about
how good his group had sounded tonight. How tight they had
been, and how they could anticipate each other's moves.
Julian knew this was bullshit. Anyone who knew anything
about music would have known that those where all practiced
changes and moves. He could have done them in his sleep.
These people would go back to their offices or coffee shops
tomorrow, and talk about what a great jazz band they had
heard. The desired effect: they would seem cooler to
everyone around them.
The bartender brought his beer, and Julian nodded
slightly to her. He had known Isabel for a while. Simply by
sight if nothing else, and she always had his Boddingtons's
ready for him. Beer was easy to serve, she always said, so
she had never minded that he was the only one who drank it.
Tonight she seemed kind of distracted though, and half way
through pouring his beer made an excuse and left the bar.
"Guess she had a date to get to," a man's voice came at
him from behind him. "I told her I'd keep you company."
Brown 54
she finished. Rebecca went behind the bar and retrieved his
beer, and also set down a glass of wine that he had not seen
earlier. "My name is Ben," She said.
"Julian," he replied curtly. He sighed and decided to
launch right into it.
"Look I just got out of a relationship," Did this sound as
cliche to this guy as it did to him? "I don't really feel
like getting into anything right now." He told him briefly
about Paul, and his feelings about Julian's music.
"He said it best, I'm not making a difference of any
kind so, you know, I don't feel like talking."
"That's fine," but he didn't walk away. "There was just
something that I wanted to show you." Rebecca put her hand
over top of his folded ones that were resting on the bar,
and Julian felt the tingling between his shoulders. He
looked around and saw the strains and muscles, the pulsing
that Rebecca had been seeing all night. At the middle of
this violent blood bath, this red glow of people changing
bodies and minds, of lies flowing from their mouths like
rivers, and of the final truth spreading from some of their
finger tips, he saw, actually saw, the music that was coming
from the stage. He watched as his music mixed with what was
most intensely the people in front of him.
Rebecca moved her hands from off of his and picked up
Brown 55
her glass, but before she left the bar she leaned over and
whispered into Julian's ear. "See, it does matter. All of
it changes us" When he looked up, she was gone from his
side.
Brown 56
Emaline
"What happened to me Isabel?" All nervousness and
uncertainty had left her voice. She looked down at her
form. She was a very pretty girl. Her black hair had grown
to her shoulders with a silky feel. She had small shoulders
and a tall frame, small breasts curved under her shirt. She
had dark blue eyes.
Isabel looked just as stunned.
"I don't know, honestly I don't Edward."
"It's Emaline actually," she looked down at the floor.
"I don't really know why, it just came out when this boy
asked me what my name was."
She paused and, almost without thinking, Emaline
bridged the gap between them in a second, slid her hand up
behind Isabel's head and pulled her in close, kissing soft
and unsure lips. They pulled their heads apart after a
while.
They didn't speak at all, but Isabel kissed her back,
longer and harder, pressing her up against the wall of the
bathroom with Emaline breathing softly in her ear.
Brown 57
Flicks
Closing time in the club was like a machine winding to
a stop. Street lights popped on outside on the sidewalk and
illuminated the path home for those whom had spent the
night deep inside the clubs red walls. Isabel had gone back
to work. She had finished wiping down the last of the
counters and tables. She had hung the last long stemmed
wine glass on the hanging rack. The top floor lost in the
darkness was no longer so ominous and harsh lights flooded
the dance floor. The rhythm slowed to a steadying beat.
Not long before closing, the members of Slapdash saw
Julian leave on the arm of a white-faced boy with black
hair. He was someone they had never seen before. When Paul
came in a little bit later looking for Julian they told him
that he was sick, and had gone home early.
Isabel wiped the dark wooden bar one last time, and
hung the rag up. Rebecca pulled a drunk and wide eyed
Julian through the darken streets. A jazz tune played
circles in Julian's head as he gazed up at the brilliant
stars.